Squeak Carnwath

b. 1947, Abington, Pennsylvania; lives in Oakland, California


Squeak Carnwath draws upon the philosophical and mundane experiences of daily life in her paintings and prints, which can be identified by lush fields of color combined with text, patterns, and identifiable images. She doesn’t plan her images in advance; instead, she uses art as a discovery process, saying that “art-making is a kind of self-making…finding out who we are, where we are, and how we are oriented in the universe.” For her, imagination is the mind’s freedom. During her two weeks in residence at Tamarind, Carnath created Reasons, an edition through which she reveals the important things in her day, prompting us to think about how ordinary, everyday objects in combination create broader significance.

Carnwath has received numerous awards including the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, two Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Award for Individual Artists from the Flintridge Foundation.

More about Carnwath
Artist’s website
Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale | PAFA – Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts